Orbán: «Chancellor, welcome to the club!»

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Viktor Orban and Olaf Scholz

Hungary’s Prime Minister agreed with Germany’s introduction of border controls as a barrier to stop the migration wave.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán continues to insist that his country can make its own decisions on immigration and asylum.

«Some things should not be decided in Brussels. Who can decide whether a country should live with migrants or not? This should be decided by the people and their elected leaders, not by an imperialist center of forced integration», said the «naughty child» at a recent discussion event in Italy.

I would like to point out that, ironically, Hungary is currently leading the European bloc as the president of the EU Council, according to the principle of rotation. Another important detail: in the EU, asylum policy is governed exclusively by European legislation, not national legislation. The Hungarian leader is well aware of this, but continues to defy it.

Let me remind you that the Hungarians blocked the border with Serbia, which is also the external border of the European Union, with a high fence and barbed wire. Transit zones were set up in the neutral zone, where asylum seekers were often detained for several months pending the outcome of legal proceedings. The European Court of Justice declared the practice illegal and overturned it. But Orbán has achieved his goal: last year, Hungary granted asylum to only five applicants, and only 15 cases are currently under review.

For now, Budapest remains the only member of the informal «Stop Migration» club in the vast expanse of united Europe. EU officials repeatedly emphasize that this approach systematically violates European law. Since 2015, the European Court of Justice has repeatedly pointed this out. Last July, the court imposed a hefty fine of 200 million euros on Orbán for refusing to change the practice of accepting asylum applications only at Hungarian embassies in Serbia and Ukraine.

The Hungarian leader did not accept the decision made in Luxembourg (where the European Court of Justice is located) and declared that he would not pay the money. It is expected that in response to this defiance, the European Commission will reduce payments to Budapest from the EU budget as early as September. It has also been announced that an additional fine of one million euros will be imposed for each day of delay in implementing the Court’s ruling.

Orbán, in turn, threatened to bus all asylum seekers and refugees who made it to Hungary to Brussels and drop them off in front of the European Union headquarters.

Interestingly, the EU member states (including Hungary) recently adopted the so-called «migration pact» in order to reduce the wave of migration and increase the number of deportations. It was a clever move: the right to asylum remains inviolable, but processing procedures should be accelerated and, if possible, moved outside the EU to closed centers similar to the Hungarian transit zones. But now the Hungarian authorities, feeling wronged by Brussels, are also rejecting the «migration pact».

Tensions are rising. But in his clashes with Brussels, Orbán has unexpectedly gained a trump card. On September 9, Germany introduced temporary border controls at its land borders to detect migrants and asylum seekers entering the country illegally. Chancellor Olaf Scholz, in the run-up to next year’s federal elections, decided to take measures to reduce the flow of migration that has literally overwhelmed the country and caused discontent among German citizens. Just think: in May, Germany had 365,000 asylum applications under review!

«We must be able to choose who comes to Germany. I am speaking clearly about this here. One of the steps to achieve this is to take control of illegal migration, to reduce the number of those who enter Germany illegally, and to send back those who should not stay», the head of the Berlin cabinet declared in the Bundestag on September 11, decisively distancing himself on this issue from the liberal values promoted by his «traffic light» coalition.

The chancellor’s «border» initiative, aimed at saving his party from a looming defeat in the federal elections, drew sharp criticism from neighboring countries. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk called the possible return of migrants to their home countries or to the country where they crossed the EU border directly from Germany’s borders «unacceptable».

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer also said that if Germany takes measures to send back large numbers of immigrants across the common border, Austria will do the same and deport more people to the east, to the Balkans. According to him, the new German interpretation of asylum procedures is «peculiar and does not fit into the generally accepted European approach».

In practice, it turns out that Scholz, whether intentionally or not, has played into Hungary’s position on the migration issue.

Orbán immediately responded by approving Germany’s actions to reinstate land border controls, even though this contradicts the provisions of the Schengen Agreement.

«Welcome to the club», the Hungarian Prime Minister told Scholz on one of the social networks, using the hashtag #StopMigration.

And this is just the beginning…